


Angels, and Arise, Arise

by imochan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, MWPP Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 14:58:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A space to breathe in.</p><p>Written for the Shacking Up SESA challenge, 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angels, and Arise, Arise

Pairing: Sirius/Remus  
Rating: R  
Warnings: Slash, sex, (and a wee bit of denial)  
Summary: A space to breathe in.  
Notes: Happy Holidays, [](http://calixta9.livejournal.com/profile)[**calixta9**](http://calixta9.livejournal.com/)!

 

 

_At the round earth's imagined corners, blow_  
 _Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise_  
 _From death, you numberless infinities_  
 _Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,_  
 _All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,_  
 _All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,_  
 _Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,_  
 _Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe._  
 _But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,_  
 _For, if above all these, my sins abound,_  
 _'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,_  
 _When we are there; here on this lowly ground,_  
 _Teach me how to repent; for that's as good_  
 _As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood._

\---

Sirius imagines that they love Brighton, together. Mostly when it's raining and the beach is wet with haze, with scuttling, fearful crabs, wreathes of salty weeds, crackling-black packets of seaweed pods and coiled, eroded, sharp edges of conches and oysters and clams, where the iridescence curls out from under a wrinkled hood like a winking shard of glass, and the sand-rubbed pebbles are small and round, and piled into each other's cracks, safe and smooth-grey. The end of the ocean disappears into the sky like a flawless seam, because the rain smoothes out all the edges; it's rounded, the world. And the dock creaks, smelling like the wet, salt-encrusted wood of a grandfather, when they crouch under it, with their bare calves gritty with damp sand, with Remus's hair turned dark brown and plastered flat against his head; it sticks to his cheeks.

They crouch against the rock-face wall, lichen yellow-green and crisp against their backs, mist sucking the clarity from the air, water dripping, viscous, from the separated planks above their heads. (Remus is quiet and has dark, violet bruises under his eyes. Sirius watches him scratch a long scab on his wrist.)

He lights a match against a post; it almost hisses out, in the rain. The smoke from Sirius's cigarette is washed from his skin and his lips and everything that is left tastes of salt. Remus shifts and his shoulder presses against Sirius's side; his shirt is white and damply translucent, and Sirius can see Remus's ribs in the places where it clings to the skin. He exhales and imagines he can see his own fingerprints, there, too. Remus reaches for the cigarette, the damp skin of his forearm brushes Sirius's elbow, wrist. And Sirius lets him take it, because it's beautiful to see his lips on it, the white crook of a wrist and the thin fingers, and smoke curling against his tongue. It's better than Remus's mouth under his own, like this, better than the pale triangle of damp skin at Remus's neck when his head is bent; this is the greatest intimacy.

Sirius stands (and the whitewashed, hollow bones of a bird crunch under his heel). They curl their fingers together, locked and loose and easier than holding hands, and they scrape the sand from their skin, and the stairs up are rough under their feet.

Sirius catalogues this as 'our place'.

\---

_Hello._

_They never give you enough space, here. I'm sorry if I run out. But I don't suppose it matters, I never know where to start. I could tell you what I did today: I bought the ink for this, and a box of peppermints, and a pair of gloves, because it snowed. I walked along the river, the long way back, to test them out, the gloves I mean. The snow tastes different here, even when you tip your head back all the way – 'like you're supposed to'. It just doesn't work here, I suppose. I hadn't any money left, so I went back to the inn and waited and had something to eat, and did what I had to do, what I came for, and waited some more. It felt like the time on the train platform. Isn't it odd how you spend most of your life anticipating a moment? Isn't it like that? Isn't there anywhere where it stretches on?_

_Sorry. I don't think this will ever work. I can never say enough._

_R.  
Dec. '80_

On the reverse, a picture of the Eiffel Tower, in spring. There is a woman with a red coat, her smile caught half-flash. (The edges are curled and yellow.)

\---

Remus sits on the edge of the table. "More salt," he says, and gnaws on a thumbnail and smiles and Sirius swats him with the flat of the spoon.

"You," says Sirius. "Walking coronary. No more comments from the peanut gallery."

"Cheese grating gallery."

"Doesn't redeem you in any way," says Sirius, and adds more salt, anyway.

Remus tastes the sauce with an imperious little tilt of the head and a slight lean forward when Sirius offers the spoon (and his palms brush the pile of unopened letters, rich-red sealing wax crumbling on the wood, one is red). He smells like cloves and Sirius's sheets, and Sirius kisses him, hand on one knee, knees tight against Sirius's thighs, spoon dripping onto the curling linoleum.

They eat from the same plate (most of them are dirty anyway; the flat is falling apart at the seams, really, held together by spellotape in the corners and the round sand-smooth pebbles on the windowsill, above the sink). They don't clean up after themselves.

 

\---

Remus's flat is best for waking into. The bed is pushed against the window because there isn't any other room for it, they are pressed together and forced into sleep and contained, and there aren't enough shelves, so the books are carpeting, laid out in piles and stepping-stones and pillows, and when the windows are open the pages fan, silk-rustles.

Remus is laid boneless in his own sheets (he cringes when he dreams in strange places, which are strange only to him, and not always the same), and his back is painted with Venetian shadows, lashes like feathers and Sirius spreads his fingers like wings against the scars over shoulder blades – cream and white lacing and bronze joins - and a pigeon coos on an iron rail. And they are angels of this moment (flotsam be damned, thinks Sirius).

He kisses the triangle of skin at the nape of Remus's neck, and holds his breath silent, for a moment, with the press of a palm. Still, shh. Still.

Sirius catalogues this as 'love'.

\---

Sirius borrows Remus's suitcase when he leaves, for a while. The train jostles and whistles and smells a little like soot and old cigarettes. There is a baby crying, somewhere, in the background, and he keeps the case on his lap, because he's found a postcard in the inside pocket. He doesn't ever remember seeing it before, but it's his, it's to him: because it's the way Remus speaks when he thinks everyone else is asleep and Sirius knows he's the only person in the world to ever hear that.

The loop of the 'l' says I miss you, the curve on the tail of an 'e' is comfort and affection and a little bit of man's best friend (the spill of ink on the corner is like loneliness), the cross of a 't' is the hitch of breath when fingers are slick and mouths are softened red and damp with salt.

Hello, says Sirius, to the picture of the woman in the red coat. Hello, say the penstrokes. I'm sorry.

\---

Sirius spreads his fingers over Remus's shoulder, carving him open, cupping an elbow, splaying a wrist to the carpet. Remus's hand curls in the pages of Whitman. Sirius kissed the curve of the tilted jaw and Remus whispers, unintelligible, like hazy rain, like silk leaves with printed words and looping 'l's.

 

Sirius mouths at Remus's neck, tongue slick and damp and the map of skin like the space under the shelves in the library, where they hid, sometimes. Remus's body is bare, laid open, taut and arching, soft places exposed for Sirius to suck and nose and grip, hard enough to make Remus open his eyes, blind.

Sirius scrapes his teeth at the inside of Remus's thigh, high up into the hidden places where he can leave reddened bruises, for him, for himself, for love (and flotsam be damned), where he can cup a knee and hook it over his shoulder and swirl a tongue, bite, here is indelibility.

They kiss (and the page tears).

\---

Remus crumbles up the hours, into his tea. They sit quiet there, melting into air, and he is breathing. Sirius props his chin on his wrist, on the pillows, and closes his eyes. And here is love, in the corners. Protect me, thinks Sirius, protect us, (you selfish bastard you smoke screen mother _fuck_ er,world, wealth, harm, illness, death, despair, mistrust, world, world), and don't ever let us go. Gently, don't ever let us go.


End file.
